


It’s Natural To Be Afraid (The Rhapsody in Scarlet Remix)

by VegaOfTheLyre



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-15
Updated: 2010-05-15
Packaged: 2017-10-09 11:20:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/86723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VegaOfTheLyre/pseuds/VegaOfTheLyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Smiling widely, Rose takes her hand. It is not the same fit as before, or <i>before</i>; but it is not a bad fit all the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It’s Natural To Be Afraid (The Rhapsody in Scarlet Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [singlecrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/gifts), [Raven (singlecrow)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Bohemian Rose](https://archiveofourown.org/works/74338) by [Raven (singlecrow)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/pseuds/Raven). 



> Title from the instrumental piece by Explosions in the Sky, found [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE2EfKoGcmA).
> 
> The original story was a joy to read, and this was a blast to write. I really hope you enjoy!

When the Doctor comes down from her post-regeneration madness, having picked most of the seaweed from her dark curls and scrubbed the scorch marks from her forearm, she finds herself in front of the console, fingers drifting idly across springs and buttons. It is not, she decides, quite _right_ for her; she measures handspans between levers that were once easy to reach but are now clumsily far apart for these much-smaller hands. This incarnation is rather nostalgic, she finds, and would rather like to cling to this TARDIS, but it's not exactly practical anymore and she thinks she needs to change the skin.

I'll have to get on that, she thinks. Later.

Because there is something nagging at the back of her mind. She wanders around to the other side of the console, tilts a viewscreen down to see it better. It is stuck round with clusters of yellow notes; she picks one up at random, and her newly-minted hearts threaten to fail her.

_Blind date with Rose, that café you like, 3.00. Try to dress respectably._

Even while something in her head scoffs at the impossibility of that last bit, the Doctor stares at the note, eyes following the whorls and slicing lines without really comprehending. Dimly, she remembers setting up the date back when her head was buzzing with power and new life and _potential_ and, oh, let's not forget sheer _insanity_. This is – this is a monumental mistake. She cannot do this to Rose. Rose has moved on; Rose needs to live her own life; the Doctor is being cruel to keep interfering with her.

(But that's not even it, see. What's worst of all, the Doctor thinks, is that she is afraid, afraid to her very bones. What if Rose sees through her, what if Rose can't deal with this new development, what if – well, what if Rose doesn't even like her any more?)

She can't stand Rose up, though. She _can't_.

The Doctor sighs, tugs her necktie away from her throat, and heads for the wardrobe.

It is overwhelming.

Four hours later, when she finally remembers what she came in here for, she is painting her nails, sitting cross-legged on the floor beneath a rack of coats. Carefully, mindful of her still-wet nails, the Doctor pushes a trailing lace hem out of her face and steels herself to sort the piles of possible options she's laid out on the floor.

"Stop putting it off," she tells herself sternly, and stands.

And then she notices that her toenails are woefully bare, and she sits back down again with some red varnish this time. It is difficult to coordinate her limbs to accomplish it; how do women _do_ it? Within five minutes she has streaks of scarlet up the tops of her toes but none of it is on her nails, and yes, she realises that she is procrastinating but she's got a time machine. Might as well make the most of it.

* * *

She doesn't mean to let it slip. Really, she doesn't. Just a quick meal, a dash in to make sure Rose was all right and happy, and then they would go their separate ways and they would both be fine and the Doctor would get over it. That had been the plan, anyway.

But when she's with Rose, it's like – oh, it's like everything new and strange and wellworn and familiar all at once, and with the warm yellow sunlight and the way Rose's hair swings away from her neck and the way her shoe dangles off her foot, well, how could she be expected to do anything but make a complete idiot of herself?

She's resigned herself to it, at this point.

 

* * *

 

It's after midnight now, but as the Doctor closes the TARDIS door behind Rose she feels like they've only been talking for maybe five minutes. How is it that time seems to mean exactly nothing when she's with Rose? If everything else has changed, it is something, she supposes, to realise that this is the same as ever.

Rose licks her lips, touching her finger to the chocolate ice cream still lingering at the corner of her mouth, and the Doctor's eyes are fixed on her lips and she is somewhat startled to realise that she wants to be the one to do the licking. So this is how we're going to behave, she thinks.

"You know, you could have said something, Doctor," Rose tells her, voice tart. "But of a shock."

But she's smiling.

"I know," the Doctor says. She leans back against the railing, elbow propped up on the jump seat. "I know! I'm sorry. It was just – just a bit of fun. Don't get too much of that, these days."

Rose looks at her. "On your own again, Doctor?"

The Doctor gestures outward, uselessly. "Well," she says. "Yes. I'm back where I always am. Same old, you know."

"Right," Rose says. The Doctor doesn't know if it's pity she hears in Rose's voice and finds that she doesn't want to know. She looks at the floor, at the console, at anything but Rose's eyes. She raises her fingers to her teeth, discovering at once that she is a nailbiter, now, and that biting painted nails tastes very awful.

"Doctor," Rose says.

"I'm sorry," the Doctor tells her again, hand dropping away from her mouth. "Is this all too weird? It's too weird. I'll go. I'm sorry."

"Doctor," Rose repeats, and when she goes on her voice is steady. "If you had been – if you'd been him again, it would be too weird. That ship's sailed and gone, yeah? But you, you're all… new."

Rose hesitates before that last word, like she'd meant to say something else. The Doctor looks up at her; Rose's lashes lower, then lift again.

"New-new-new Doctor?" she says flippantly, and then hates herself for it in the next two echoing throbs of her heartsbeats. It sounds all clumsy and wrong on this tongue, but before she has the chance to eat her words Rose's finger is on her lips.

"Don't, Doctor," she says. The Doctor goes still, afraid to breathe or to move a muscle. "You don't have to. You're not him."

And not _him_ either, the Doctor knows, not the idiot with the hair or the idiot with no hair, Rose's first, Rose's everything.

"I find," the Doctor says unevenly, feeling the pad of Rose's index finger moving as she speaks, wanting to kiss it and wanting to kiss _her_, "that I'm coming to realise it more and more every minute."

And then Rose's lips are on her lips, and she quite forgets herself entirely.

"Ah," the Doctor says when Rose pulls away. Her heartsbeats are coming ragged and fast, so loud she is certain Rose can hear it through her skin.

Smiling widely, Rose takes her hand. It is not the same fit as before, or _before_; but it is not a bad fit all the same.

"You've changed," Rose says.

The Doctor flexes her hand in Rose's and looks at their fingers, twined together. Her scarlet nails meeting Rose's neat unvarnished ones. The dirt on the knuckle of the thumb she hadn't noticed when she was scrubbing up after the explosion. The silver bracelet hanging from Rose's wrist, banging coolly against the back of the Doctor's hand.

"I have," the Doctor says. She feels her stomach beginning to unknot, feels the tension falling away from her shoulders. "Do you like it?"

Rose cocks her head. "I do," she says, and she pulls the Doctor close by the collar of her shirt, and the Doctor laughs between kisses.


End file.
